Associations of Daily Psychosocial Stress Exposure, Stress Severity, and Negative Affect with Postprandial Changes in Blood Pressure and Pulse Pressure Augmentation

Increased exposure to psychosocial stress and negative affect are associated with poor cardiometabolic health. Impairments in postprandial hemodynamic adjustments may represent an important link between psychosocial stress and decreased cardiometabolic health. Purpose: To examine associations among daily psychosocial stress and meal-induced changes in arterial blood pressure and pulse pressure augmentation in healthy young adults. We hypothesized that greater daily stressor exposure, stressor severity, and negative affect would be associated with greater postprandial increases in blood pressure and blunted decreases in postprandial pulse pressure augmentation. Methods: Twenty healthy young adults (7 males, 13 females; 22±1 y; 24±1 kg/m 2 ) completed stress and emotion diaries at the conclusion of each day for 7 days. The number of stress exposures to common, daily psychosocial stressors (e.g., arguments/disagreements, work-related stress, discrimination, etc), the average stressor severity, and negative affect on days where stressors were and were not experienced were determined from the diaries for each participant. Participants then completed an in-laboratory experimental visit, during which brachial blood pressure (BP) and pulse pressure augmentation indices were assessed via pulse wave analysis before and after ingestion of a liquid mixed meal (30 g protein, 35 g carbohydrate, 5 g fat). One-way ANOVAs were used to examine the influence of meal ingestion on BP and pulse pressure augmentation. Partial correlation coefficients (r XY·Z ) were calculated to examine the relation of stressor exposure, stressor severity, and negative affective responsiveness with postprandial hemodynamic adjustments (calculated as Δ from baseline to 60-min postprandial). All r XY·Z ’s were partialled for sex, BMI, age, and ethnicity, while stressor severity was also partialled for stressor exposure. To assess negative affective responsiveness, negative affect on stressor days was additionally adjusted for both stressor exposure and negative affect on non-stressor days. Results: Brachial systolic BP increased (+5 mmHg, p = 0.02) from baseline to 30-minutes postprandial and remained elevated across the postprandial period (+5–6 mmHg, p ≤ 0.02), while diastolic BP did not change ( p = 0.08) and mean BP increased from baseline to 60-minutes postprandial only (+4 mmHg, p < 0.01). Both augmentation pressure (AP) and augmentation index (AIx) decreased from baseline to 15-minutes postprandial (-2 mmHg, p = 0.001 and -6%, p = 0.004) and remained lower across the entire postprandial period (all p < 0.001 ). Neither stress exposure nor stress severity were significantly associated with postprandial systolic BP, AP, or AIx adjustments (r XY·Z = -.27 –.25, p ≥ 0.39). Negative affective responsiveness was not associated with postprandial systolic or AIx adjustments (r XY·Z =.18 and.28, p = 0.61 and 0.43, respectively), yet was moderately but non-significantly associated with the postprandial adjustment in AP (r XY·Z = 0.57, p = 0.09). Conclusions: Liquid mixed meal ingestion induces increases in brachial systolic and mean BP, and decreases in pulse pressure augmentation likely owing to the competing sympathoexcitatory and systemic vasodilatory effects of nutrient ingestion. Our preliminary findings suggest that negative affective responsiveness to daily stressors may be related to blunted postprandial reductions in pulse pressure augmentation. This project is funded through a departmental / PI discretionary fund. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2025 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.